#STRask - If We’re Not Under the Old Testament Laws, Why Are We Using Them to Condemn People?

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

Questions about why people are using the Old Testament laws to condemn people if we’re not under those laws, thoughts on Christians celebrating the feasts of the Law out of obedience to the Lord, and whether we should keep the feasts so we’ll recognize Christ at his second coming.    If the Old Testament laws were not even meant for us, then why are so many using the old laws to condemn people now? What do you think about my friends insisting that Christians celebrate and honor the various feasts of the Mosaic Law—not out of a spirit of legalism, but merely out of obedience to the Lord who saved them? Just as part of the purpose of the Mosaic Law and sacrificial system was to teach God’s people how to recognize Jesus when he came, should Christians be keeping the Feast of Tabernacles and other commands so we can recognize Christ at his second coming?

Good morning, Greg. Good morning. So this first question actually follows from the last question in the last episode, but if anyone wants to know what that was, they're going to have to go back and see what it was. A reverse cliffhanger. All right. Here's Tina's question. I read that the old laws, the First Testament, was not even meant for us. It was meant for God's Jewish disciples. Then why are so many using the old laws to condemn people now?

Well, this is a question that comes up a lot. So I would ask maybe a question. Let me just lead it into this to kind of make a point. Okay. So the old laws condemn murder. But that was the old law. That was for those disciples. So murder's okay now?

The old laws condemn disobeying your parents. So that was the old law for Moses' disciples, disobeying your parents. Could just go down the Ten Commandments and the other commandments. There are a lot more. The Ten are kind of like a summary. There's a whole lot more. So, which include, by the way, the prohibitions of same-sex behavior, which is curious about this, by the way, is that I've heard some critics of the Bible strain at words that are being used,

oh, that word doesn't mean this. That word doesn't mean homosexuality or whatever. or that word was invented in 1934 or whatever. Curiously, the main passages that talk about prohibition and homosexual behavior, and that would be the Levitical passages. There's two of them. And then Romans 1, they don't use a name. They describe the behavior.

So you're not going to get around it that way. Okay. So all these behaviors that the so-called old law, which was meant for, Moses' disciples, these things are just fair game now? Is that the way we're supposed to look at it? Because that's the implication of this objection. The implication of the objection is that's the old law. Now, we don't live under that law anymore. Does that mean we live under no law? What about murder? What about lying? What about rape? What about theft? Well, no one's going to say,

yeah, those are okay now. But these are all in that old law prohibitions there. So if our reaction or or our way of arguing regarding homosexuality is that was maybe prohibited in the old law but we're not under the old law anymore, then the same line of reasoning would have to apply to all these other things. Now, if you're going to say, well, wait a minute, it's still wrong to murder, rape, steal, et cetera, et cetera, lie. Okay, then in virtue of what is it wrong? If you're dismissing certain behaviors that are prohibited in the Old Testament because it's Old Testament, then how are you saying, well, some of those behaviors are still wrong? So I want to know the rationale.

In fact, we have a rationale for that. It's a fair question that people raise, but they never think about the implications of their, the application of their point. And I've just offered the implications of the application of their point. I mean, I hear this all the time. You can't be on the Internet very long looking at interfaith dialogues with skeptics, challenging Christians, especially on the issue of homosexuality where this thing doesn't come up. We can't eat shellfish.

We can't wear clothing that has two different types of – we don't regard that anymore. No, so you have to look at the context, all right. And what it turns out is, yes, I agree. and we've discussed this before, the Old Testament law is for the Jews. The Old Testament law is not for Gentiles. Even then, it wasn't for Gentiles. Just like California law is for Californians. It's not for people in Illinois, unless they come to California, obviously.

But they're not constrained by the laws of California if they live in Illinois. But it turns out that the law. of California have homicide statutes, and so do the laws in Illinois have homicide statutes. Why do they both have homicide statutes? Because there are certain moral concerns that rise above parochial elements, local things, you know. And because they are universally determined. They're universals, whether moral virtues or moral vices. they're universals, they apply to everybody.

And so in any law, you're going to find evidences of these universals, even though there are going to be other particulars in the law that just apply to those people at that time, and that's it, like the shellfish, for example. And so the question now becomes, what about sexual behavior that is prohibited in the Old Testament? Like when a man lies with a man, the text says the way he lies with a woman. but they're not just talking about, you know, being in bed horizontal together, obviously. The point there is the way he's supposed to be lying with a woman.

In other words, he should be lying with a man the way he lies with a woman in this regard. That's a problem. And incidentally, in that passage in Leviticus, it's kind of boxed in by prohibitions on, what, bestiality and child sacrifice. Oh, well, that's the old law. That's just for the disciples of Moses. We find a sacrifice our children now to Molek or whatever. Anyway, you can see there's a, that's silly.

But it just goes to show that this kind of question needs to be looked at more carefully and just tossing it out is not adequate. It turns out that the prohibitions that we see in the Old Testament to homosexuality by description behavior, we see repeated in the new. New Testament by description behavior, specifically Romans chapter 1. And tied to creation. Tied to creation. The woman that God made for men, man said no to that woman, the way she's meant to function

with them sexually. That's all in the language there of Romans 1, 22, 23, 24, right in there somewhere. And so we know this is a universal and not just a parochial localized thing just for the Jews back then because, for one, reflection on it shows that, this is a little different, the wording of it. This is an apropial thing, the way a man's supposed to lie with a woman, and it's repeated in the New Testament multiple times as a crime against God, where when it comes to, you know, eating foods that had been prohibited in the old Kashrut.

Jesus said all foods are clean. It's not what goes into a person that defiles him, but what comes out of him. I think what's interesting when he gives the list, one of them is refers to sexual sin, thefts and for fornications. And the word fornication, I can't tell you exactly, but oftentimes it's pornea, which really covers a range of sexual sin. So here you got Jesus saying, you know, sexual sin is one of those universals not like the food stuff. That's for them then for a reason.

But now. So that's the difficulty right here is trying to not realizing that there are things in the Old Testament law that actually reflect transcendent universal moral goods. And one way to know about actually two ways is when I mentioned, look at the prohibition and reflect on it. And its location, in this case, between bestiality and child sacrifice. Maybe it's kind of in that group. And secondly, if it's repeated in the New Testament. And then that's going to be universal. Excuse me, a universal. By the way, I don't think that child sacrifice, I don't think that child's sacrifice is prohibited, repeated in the New Testament as a harm. But it doesn't mean that it's not a universal. All one has to do is consider the nature of it to know that. Yeah.

And just so people can understand, because they might not have heard us talking about the Old Testament law before. But if you read through Romans 7, Paul explains what he says is that just as when a married woman, the husband dies, she's released from a law so that she can marry another. This is what happens when we're joined to Christ. Go back 6 through 8. Romans 6 through 8 goes through this whole argument. But when we're joined to Christ, we die with him, we're buried with him, and we're raised with him, and we're joined to him instead of the old. Testament law. But he doesn't leave it there because then he goes through the whole idea that now what God is doing is conforming us to Christ. So we are to become like him and our character.

And we learn about those universal moral principles from the Old Testament law. As Paul explains, this is how we find out what it means to love. All of those laws were meant to teach us to love. And some of those laws were a shadow of Christ, like the laws about sacrifices and things like that. We don't need those anymore because we have Jesus who is the substance. But anything that reflects God's character and shows us who he is by character, that's what we're conforming ourselves to now. And the New Testament does talk about specific aspects of God's character and how we're supposed to live. But it also points back to our learning from the Old Testament laws about what. What is moral? And so like you said, there are these universal moral principles there that we learn about. And then you see these other things where, for example, you mentioned Jesus declaring all foods clean. And the reason why is because these were shadows of things to come. And I think both Colossians and Hebrews talk about this about Jesus being the substance. So once we have him, we don't need to point.

to him with these other aspects of the law. And we're, I'm trying to think of another. There's another example where Jesus says, I think he's with Peter. He's probably with Peter. And he says, you know, we need to pay for the tax. But he says, who pays the tax? The sons or the king or the subjects. And he says, well, the subjects do.

And he goes, that's right. But so we don't offend them, we're going to pay the tax. We're going to follow this law, even though they're a new category is being created of sons. So there's all sorts of explanations. It's not just that we're randomly saying we're not under this law. There's actually an explanation of what happened and why we're not under this law and why we still follow these moral principles. So it's all there. And in fact, this is, this was a huge question because think about it.

you're moving from a group of Jewish people into a group that lets the Gentiles be grafted in. So the big question at the time was, how do we follow this? What do we do? What do they have to follow? So another place you could go is Acts 15, where they said, do these Gentiles need to be circumcised? Do they need to follow the law? And the answer is no. But one of the things they can't do is engage in sexual immorality. So that's another example of how that moral category is something that is a universal moral principle.

Transcendent. Yeah. And then finally, I just want to say something about the wording of this. Why are so many using the old laws to condemn people now? It's as if our goal is to just tell people they're bad. That's not our goal. As a matter of fact, we think we're all condemned by our deeds. we're not any different from anyone else. We're trying to say, look, you have failed and there are

consequences. But this is why Jesus died on the cross for you. We're not trying to condemn you, and that's the end of our conversation. We're trying to say, look what you've done. You've rebelled against our good God, and there's something better for you. And you can be with our good God because Jesus died and paid the penalty for our sin, and we can be joined to him and take on his righteousness and he takes on our sin and then we can stand before God and be with God. And this is the reason that we were created. So all of these things are standing in the way of you being with the person you were created to be with. So we talked about everyone deserving love and happiness either last episode or the episode before. Okay, well, this is the way to that. This is the way

to love and happiness. To true love and true happiness is to be with the father. But in order to do that, you first have to understand the bad news, which is that we are all separated from him because of our deeds. So we're not condemning them with it. We're showing them the reality. Their deeds are condemning them, not the law. I mean, the law does condemn them because it shows a record of them, but it's their deeds. It's not, and this is another point Paul makes. He's such a genius. What's so interesting, and in Romans, he keeps saying, well, he keeps anticipating objections. And he says, well, then is the law bad, since it's condemning us? And he says, no, the law is good. It's our sin that condemns us, and the law reveals our sin. Something good reveals how bad our

sin is. Okay, here's a question from Luke. I've got some friends that insist on Christians celebrating and honoring the various feasts of the Mosaic law. They are clear they don't celebrate these appointed times out of a spirit of legalism, but merely out of obesity. obedience to the Lord who saved them. I get why having some firsthand knowledge of Jewish culture can be educational, but I find insistence on this practice to be backward. Christ is the substance of these shadows. What do you think? Well, I think that's a fair thing to say Christ is the substance, but I think a more foundational element is these are Jewish holidays and practices. They are not Gentile practices. They are not new covenant practices.

They are part of the Hebrew law that the Jews as Jews were supposed to observe. The words I think that Luke used here is they insist as an act of obedience on following these. What obedience? Where are any believers in under the New Covenant obliged to celebrate Purim, for example? or Yom Kippur, or of the feast of booths. Where is that? I'm talking now about as a matter of obedience. In fact, Jesus, or rather, Paul says, some people, this Colossians, what, chapter 2,

I think some people consider one day above the other, others consider all the days the same. And I think that he makes reference to Sabbath there too. And he just shrugs your soul as what them. Let every man be convinced in his own mind. I think you have it here. So you've mentioned, too, that was Romans 14, the first part. And then the second part is Colossians 2. Therefore, no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day,

things which are a mere shadow of what is to come. But the substance belongs to Christ. Yeah. So that brings up the second element that Luke brought. up and that these are fulfilled in Jesus. So there are two elements here. First, they're part of that law that applies to Jews, and that's it. If you're back to my earlier analogy, if you're in Illinois, you have no obligation to obey

anything in the California law as long as you're in Illinois. Okay. It's a perfect parallel in my mind. But secondly, the Hebrew laws were, and particularly the feasts and everything, were shadows of things to come. And now the perfect has come, the partial is done away with to kind of hijack another verse. But it makes the same point. Excuse me. So why don't we, why don't we, what don't we slaughter bulls and goats, you know? Why don't we have all of the Old Testament sacrificial system? That was just as obligatory as any of these other things. Right. There's a

lot more than just the feast days. Oh, yeah. Pass over at all. Why not do all of these things? Now, if somebody wants to do the, the feast of, wow, more power to them. I have no problem with that. But what these folks apparently have done is they insist, as an act of obedience, Luke's words, that we need to do these things. So that's just flat out wrong. Mistaken is what I mean.

Yeah, for all the reasons I explained, you could go to Romans 7. You can go to Acts 15. You can go to Romans 14, which is the place where it says one person regards one day above another, in other regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind. But the fact is we're not, it's not a matter of obedience. But I do want to also say, along with you, Greg, that there's nothing wrong with celebrating those if you want to.

It's just no, that it's not a matter of obedience. You might have other reasons for doing it. Maybe you want to experience what Jesus experienced, or maybe you enjoy thinking about Jesus and how he was prefigured in the law. there could be other reasons, but it's not a matter of obedience. And I can never remember if it's 1 Corinthians 9 or 2nd Corinthians. Anyway, where Paul's talking about how he's, to those who are under the law, he lives under the law, to those who are not under the law, those not under the law. Because it's all about the gospel.

It's all about pointing people to Christ. And that doesn't mean you're forbidden from following the law. It just means there are other reasons to do that other than obedience. So I think, Luke, maybe your friends ought to read, and you made reference to Acts Chapter 15, that's the Jerusalem Council, where they struggled with this very issue. Excuse me, and circumcision was a kind of a stand-in for the demands of the law. And then read the book of Galatians. It's a magnificent book.

It's not very long. Read the whole thing. and there is Paul pounding the podium saying, don't do this. Look at what you're doing. If you are receiving circumcision to satisfy some legal requirement as an act of obedience, you are under obligation to keep the entire law. You have severed from grace. You're severed from Christ. This is Galatians 5 where he kind of comes to a crescendo, but the entire book is about this. No. Is it wrong to get circumcised? No. I mean, Americans are routinely circumcised, Gentiles or Jews. It's just what we do in our culture. It's not wrong to do that. It's wrong to do it for the reasons that we're being argued then with regards to the Galatians. And this is what prompted the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. That is justification by law. And this sounds to me like what people are saying, no, okay, maybe they're not. not being justified, but as an act of obedience, as an act of obedience.

It's morally obligatory. Well, if it's morally obligatory to do the feast, thank you. It's also morally obligatory to get circumcised from males, even though the salvation doesn't depend on it. How is this different? Yet Paul goes, forget about that. This is crazy. You don't understand the gospel if this is the way you're arguing.

That's Paul's whole posture in the book of Galatians. Yeah, like I said, you could read straight through the New Testament because this comes up quite a bit, quite a bit. I'm going to squeeze one more question in here from Emily. Oh, there you go again. Just as part of the purpose of the Mosaic law and sacrificial system were to, we're in place to teach God's people how to recognize Jesus when he came, should Christians be keeping the feast of tabernacles or other commands so we can recognize Christ at his second coming? Yeah, I don't know if the first statement is true, at least entirely. I don't think that this was done so that people could recognize. I mean, that didn't happen.

It wasn't until after Jesus came that the connections were made, principally in the book of Hebrews, pardon me, about Jesus being the one as a fulfillment of all those details. So I think the premises may be flawed a little bit here, but there's nothing wrong with keeping the Feast of Tabernacles. But I mean, I think the Lord's Supper is the more obvious exercise of celebrating the Lord's death until he comes. We're looking backwards and we're looking forward. So I think that's the more important one. But if somebody, I don't know a lot about tabernacles.

I mean, that's booths. And it's meant to celebrate, I think, the wandering in the wilderness and God's provision during that time because they sent up little teepees or tents or palm fronds or whatever to represent a booth is a is like a dwelling place, like a little tent, you know, made out of branches. So it's meant to reflect on that. And, you know, I don't see the connection so much with Jesus, but, you know. Well, I mean, I do think maybe recognizing isn't the right word, although John the Baptist did say, behold the Lamb of God, you know, recognizing that it, they were,

It was definitely preparing people for what Jesus was going to do, and it was made it a familiar concept to them so they would know what was happening. And even if they didn't recognize it right then, then, of course, they did make that connection later. So I do think it – I mean, obviously you think it's prefiguring Christ. So – but remember those things were prefiguring his death on the cross and his death for our sins. So when he comes again, that's going to be something completely different. And those aspects of, say, Yom Kippur, where people were asking God to forgive them and they had this whole or the sacrificial system, that's already happened. So celebrating those things, I don't think will necessarily say anything about Christ's second coming. It's going to be a different thing.

I agree. A lot of people will participate in a Passover Seder when back in 19. 2019. Why do I always go back to the last millennium when I dig for a date? Back in, maybe because I spent so much time in it. But back in 2019, when I was in Israel with a whole bunch of colleagues, we participated in the Seder, the Passover Seder, I think. Oh, maybe it was just Shabbat. In any event, lots of Christians will do that, because there's

a lot of symbolism in there. That's fine. There's no problem with that at all. All right. Thank you so much, Tina, and Luke and Emily. And you all might want to know, too, that I do let people know after I answer their questions if I have their email address, if their email address is real. There you go. Or if I'm able to respond to them on X. Some people have it set up so I can't respond to tweet. So I'm sorry if I didn't let you know, it's because I could. get in touch with you if that's the case. But I do try. So be assured that you will know if I answer your question. So please send us more questions. We'd love to hear from you. And thank you so much for listening. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.